Speaker 1: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast, an audio resource dedicated to a generation of young people who are committed to total surrender to God and total dependence on His power to reach the world with the Gospel of Christ. This podcast is designed to strengthen and encourage through a series of Bible-based practical talks.

Throughout the Christmas story, one phenomena occurs repeatedly that is often overlooked. Though the response was different each time, over and over, God showed up. As we near the celebration of the birth of our Savior, join Bobby Bosler in this podcast and consider how you respond when God shows up.

Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Mapleshade, New Jersey. And the Christmas season is fully in gear now. Christmas is coming up, if it’s not already passed, by the time you’ve listened to this. And by now, I’m sure you’ve probably done your Christmas shopping.

At least I hope you have. You’ve wrapped the presents. The tree is up. And the spirit of Christmas, I’m sure, the time of family, The time to rejoice in what God has done for us through the Christmas story, I’m sure, has come upon us all.

And, you know, during this season, I’ve been hearing, you know, some messages on Christmas. And one thing that I’ve just been thinking a lot about, and this is going to be what I’m talking about here today in this podcast.

One thing that’s been fascinating to me is I’ve just been thinking about all of the different people that were involved in what we typically call the Christmas story this time of year, how they responded. You know, Christmas is an amazing thing.

You know, you hear it and it’s almost a cliche nowadays that Jesus is the reason for the season. And that’s true. We see the little nativities with Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus in the manger. And we know it’s the time when Jesus was born, when he came and became a member of the human race.

We call it the incarnation where he took upon him forevermore into the future human flesh. It’s an amazing thing to think that Jesus left his father’s throne above and took upon him the weaknesses and limitations of a human body. And that he’s going to have that for all of eternity.

And that he did that out of love so that he could fully take our place on the cross and pay for our sins and provide for us the way to eternal life. If he is eternal life, he himself is the way. It’s a time of the year to rejoice in the gospel.

It’s a time of the year when people are open to hearing the gospel. I mean, good night, you go into stores and you hear the gospel playing many times over the speakers. It’s an amazing time of year for evangelism.

But, you know, when I’ve been thinking about Christmas and Jesus coming to this earth, I’ve been thinking about it, I don’t know if this is unique, in a little bit of a different way. I’ve been thinking about it like this. Jesus showed up. God showed up in the world. Now, I think you probably are aware of this.

At the beginning of Luke in chapter 1, it says specifically that God hadn’t spoken in a really long time. And then to Zechariah, God shows up in the temple. You know, you fast forward a little bit later. God shows up to Mary. you fast forward a little bit later, God shows up to Joseph.

God shows up to the shepherds. God shows up to the kings, the magi. God shows up to King Herod. God shows up to Simeon.

They’re all of these different people in their daily lives, just going through doing what they normally do in their own situations, grappling with their own challenges, a bunch of different age ranges, different occupations, different ethnicities. But what’s common among them all is that one day God showed up in their life.

And what’s been fascinating to me as I’ve been thinking about this is how they all responded to God showing up in their lives. I mean, you go back to Zechariah, right? And there he was. He was presenting the incense at the incense altar. And then, boom, there’s this angel in that area with him.

And this angel tells old decrepit Zechariah that he and his wife are going to have a baby. And Zechariah basically says, how can these things be? You’ve got to be joking. Do you see how old my wife is? That’s impossible. Wrong response.

you know the story and because of his wrong response because of his response of unbelief when God showed up in his life when God gave him a word from heaven when God told him the amazing miracle that he was planning to do he said there is no way and you know how many times do we when God shows up in our life whether it’s in a preaching event or in our bible reading or through a podcast we listen to, a verse we read, and we look at that.

And when we compare what we read and what we hear and what God is saying, when God shows up in our life to the obstacles that we see in front of us, to the challenges that we think we know better than God knows, how many times do we say, no way, that’s impossible, and respond in unbelief.

That’s one response I’ve thought of, the response of unbelief. But then you think of Mary. Mary was one. God showed up and basically said to her, you’ve been chosen. You’re going to bear the son of God. You know, honestly, Mary could have reacted differently than she did.

She could have thought about how everybody was going to misunderstand her. She could have thought about how everybody was going to make up lies about her and assume things about her. She could have clung to her reputation instead of obeying God’s command and the good news that God was giving to her.

But her response was, let it be as God has said. Her response was, in essence, total surrender. Okay, I don’t understand how that works. I don’t understand how this can even be possible. I do understand what this might do to me and my life and being a spouse to my husband.

And I understand this could make things really tough. But God, I want your will. God, I want what you want. Well, then you fast forward again to Joseph. Here’s a man who’s probably pretty excited, who’s engaged to be married, and then all of a sudden finds out she’s expecting and he knows it wasn’t him.

And he’s wanting to do the right thing by cutting things off with this young lady. as I think most of us would probably do as well. And yet God shows up in a dream and God says, hey, listen, Joseph, you don’t understand what’s going on here. This is not a bad situation. This is an amazing situation.

It’s going to make your life tough. Sure, a lot of things are going to be said about you that are untrue, but Joseph, I’m doing something. And Joseph, whereas he at first responded negatively, once God showed up and clarified what he wanted, Joseph did right. You fast forward to the kings, the magi here.

God showed up in their life in a little bit of a different way. They saw the signs of what God was doing. Call it a miracle or providence, whatever you want to call it, They saw the star and they knew that God was speaking. And here are these men. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this.

They were from a really long way away, these magi. And these men probably had things that they did. They probably had families. They probably had an occupation. They probably had bills. They probably had all kinds of responsibilities.

And yet, even though what they had been doing and occupying themselves was one thing, When God showed up and began speaking to them through the sign of the star, they dropped everything, everything, and they followed the star to see what God was up to.

You know, how many times if we had been in their shoes, would we have said, oh, wow, that’s interesting. Yeah, I bet you that’s a miracle. Oh, yeah, I bet you God’s speaking. Now, what was I doing? We’re so self-absorbed in the day in, day out.

things that we’re doing and plans we already have in place that we do not let ourselves get rerouted by God showing up in our lives.

You fast forward the, of course, you know, the Magi, they came back, they came to Jerusalem rather, and they went to where they’d imagined the royal baby would be born, Herod’s temple there, the palace, and they began to speak and ask about that. And Herod, There’s a sense in which God showed up in Herod’s life too.

And when Herod realized that his personal kingship could be threatened, you can almost read in those words, you know, let me know that I can come and worship him too, is basically what he said there.

And you can almost read between the lines there, Herod had no interest in worshiping him, but he had every interest in retaining his own kingship and his own right to do what he wanted to do, to rule as he wanted to rule.

I mean, I think this isn’t a stretch to say Herod was the king of his own heart and he wouldn’t want anybody telling him what to do.

And how many times when God shows up in our life, do we try to hang on to the kingship and lordship of our own life instead of bowing the knee to what God’s trying to say and do in our lives. We could talk about Simeon.

We could talk about the shepherds and how they responded in worship, both of them, the shepherds and Simeon. When God showed up, in the case of the shepherds, the angels proclaimed the good news, and they went and they saw and verified it for themselves.

Their response was one of worship and of telling everybody what God was doing in their world. When you think of Simeon, here was a man who’d been waiting for this. He’d been seeking God, and then God shows up right in front of him there in the temple. as Jesus’ parents were bringing him to be circumcised.

And there his response was to glorify God, to praise God for being so good, to let him see what he had been praying for. It was the response of praise. And, you know, I guess I’m saying all these things. I’ve been personally just contemplating on these different responses.

And, you know, in the Christmas season, it’s real easy to get all wrapped up, no pun intended. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the presents and the trees and even in family. And those are all great things that we ought to enjoy.

But you know, I’ll bet you God wants to show up in your life this Christmas season. And I’ll bet you if you spend some time with him, specifically seeking his face like Simeon was seeking, he is going to show up.

But I think the real question this season we need to ask ourselves is, how are we going to respond to it? Are we going to respond in unbelief? There’s no way. Are we going to humbly submit to the will of God, even though folks might misunderstand us?

Are we going to go out of our way like the magi to follow what God is doing in our lives? Or are we going to try to hang on to the kingship of our own life and rebel against what God is doing in our lives?

I think across the board when God shows up and he begins to make his plan known, we need to do like the shepherds and Simeon and praise and glorify God and worship him for his amazing goodness to us. I’ll be honest with you, and I’m not ready to go into all the details yet.

There are some things God’s been doing in my life that I have been worshiping him for doing. God is so good. He’s so amazing. and he wants to show up, and I’ll bet he is showing up in your life. But you just need to listen to him.

You know, just if you can think of anything this week, I want you to think about responding. How are you going to respond when God shows up in your life? I trust I’m not the only one to say this to you. I know I won’t be, but Merry Christmas.

And remember, our heartbeat here this week is when God shows up in our lives, we respond with total surrender to his will and total dependence on his power to turn the world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas, and thanks for listening.